Taking a leaf out of Blizzard’s book, EA and Bioware announced at their E3 Press conference today that their flailing MMORPG, the ambitious and clearly overbudgeted Star Wars: The Old Republic, shall be going free to play until Level 15.
The announcement comes on the heels of interest levels in the game dropping sharply. Servers are increasingly being abandoned, described by the community as ‘ghost towns,’ and there have been a lot of cancelled subscriptions.
EA put on a brave face and tried to spin The Old Republic’s numbers into some sort of success, but obviously, everybody in the crowd already knows the situation as it truly stands.
Hopefully, this Free to Play initiative will stimulate some interest in the title and maybe even reattract lapsed subscribers.